On Thursday, Pavel Djundik, creator of SteamDB and a regular data miner, tweeted about a new discovery in the Steam code (opens in new tab). His discovery was quickly confirmed by another programmer, who said, "Valve seems to be working on peer-to-peer Steam downloads over LAN."

Peer-to-peer downloads may bring to mind file-sharing software like Bittorrent, but this feature does not actually download games over the Internet; the "LAN" element focuses on a local network, with one peer would be a desktop PC and the other would be a laptop or Steam Deck. After launching a portable console, Valve is clearly interested in offering players a way to migrate their game libraries without having to re-download.

For players lucky enough to have access to an unlimited gigabit Internet connection, LAN transfers will not be as important. However, it could be a real boon for players with slower connections or those dealing with bandwidth limitations imposed by ISPs.

Given that some games are storage hogs (open in new tab), copying games over a local network instead could save hundreds of gigabytes of Internet usage per month. costs and at least alleviate some of the congestion.

According to programmers who have investigated this new feature, it is indeed working now, but it is unreliable. The only way to access it is to launch the beta version of Steam in developer mode, add "-dev" to the shortcut, open the console, and set the "@PeerContentClientMode" variable for one device and the "@PeerContentServerMode " variable on one device and "@PeerContentServerMode" on another. I have confirmed that the code is there, but have not tested the actual transfer; obviously it is not complete, as the Steam UI does not yet allow access to this functionality.

"We have not gotten this to work reliably. The client and peer do not seem to want to see each other 100% of the time." Before you expend the effort to get this to work: um, ...... It really is in its initial state (or something). I see them connect occasionally, but they frequently give up and don't seem to be very effective. Perhaps it needs to mature a bit [this code didn't show up on my console until I updated to the latest Steam beta client. In other words, it's not a leftover feature that has been left on Steam for years. Hopefully, Valve is actively tinkering with this feature and we may see support for it in the coming months. If you own multiple PCs and have a house wired with 2.5 gig Ethernet, this is a cue for mad laughter.